It's tax day - here's what your federal taxes are actually paying for
Rick Wilking/Reuters
Well, obviously, your tax return is filed with the Internal Revenue Service. After that, however, the money from your federal taxes goes towards a huge number of programs from healthcare to education to missiles.
The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget broke down exactly what federal taxes pay for in a post, breaking out federal government spending like a receipt for a $100 check.
The biggest chunk of your federal taxes goes to entitlements. Of the theoretical $100, $23.61 goes to Social Security and another $26.26 goes to healthcare programs. Of that $26.26, $15.26 is for Medicare, which helps provide health coverage for elderly Americans, and $9.55 goes to Medicaid, which helps cover low-income people.
The only other line item that cracks double digits is the $19.82 that goes towards defense spending and the next biggest expenditure is on paying down interest on the federal debt, $6.25 of the theoretical $100 bill.
Here's the full breakdown from the Center for a Responsible Budget:
Obviously this is an incredibly simplistic breakdown (defense and education spending are incredibly broad categories) but it goes give a rough sense of what the check you send to the IRS is being spent on.